


Always something smoldering somewhere

by hollenius



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, suicide attempt (referenced)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-16 05:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16947513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollenius/pseuds/hollenius
Summary: To Charles McGill, second chances always felt like one chance too many. (AU from the end of season 3)





	Always something smoldering somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



"Name, please?"

Jimmy McGill's eyes narrowed as he watched the middle-aged woman at the reception desk in front of him fill out her crossword puzzle without so much as an acknowledging glance in his direction.

"Hey, maybe you'd recognize my face if you could get it out of that puzzle for a second."

The woman continued penciling in 33-across, unperturbed by the insult.

" Maybe you can at least recognize my voice," continued Jimmy. "Or maybe you're just playing dumb."

"Name, please," she repeated.

Jimmy was beginning to lose patience.

"You should know my name by now, Nurse Ratched."

"I'm a receptionist, not a nurse, and my name is Mrs. Ramirez. I told you this the first time you came in here, and I'm telling you it for the last time now. I still need your name, sir, if you want admittance to visit any of the patients."

"Come on, I've been in here every day for the past three weeks! Do we really have to do this?"

Mrs. Ramirez's eyes remained glued to the crossword while she fumbled for a clipboard with her free hand.

"If you're in here every day, then I shouldn't have to keep telling you what to do. You know the rules. Your name, please, sir?"

Jimmy sighed, and slumped forward onto the counter. There was no point in fighting this.

"James McGill. Here to visit Charles McGill."

The receptionist handed him a clipboard. He signed his name and filled in the requisite blanks on the form, exactly as he had done every day for the previous 21 days. He handed the clipboard back to her, and was surprised to find her looking back at him as she offered him a visitor badge.

"Thanks," Jimmy said, as he put the badge on. "I'm...sorry. I swear I'm not this much of an asshole all the time."

"If you say so," said Mrs. Ramirez with a smile. Jimmy managed to fake a grin in return.

"I'm guessing the orderly will take me wherever I should go, right? Same as before?"

"Same as before. But, you know, if he didn't want to talk to you any time you came in during the past three weeks, I kind of doubt that any of that's changed today."

"Hey, I'll find that out when I get there," said Jimmy as he followed the orderly down a hallway off to the left.

\---------------------

To say that this had been a bad couple of years for Chuck would be an understatement. The past several weeks had somehow managed to be worse.

Jimmy remembered the frantic late-night phone call from Howard, the rush with Kim to the hospital, for the third time in a year, the horror at seeing Chuck in a hospital bed, yet again, but in a considerably worse state than the previous incidents. There'd been a fire. A neighbor who had been out walking a dog  that night had intervened--some Good Samaritan with superhuman strength had managed to kick through the front door and drag an unconscious Chuck out to the sidewalk. The fireman Jimmy had spoken to at the hospital had said he likely would've died if he'd been left in the house a minute or two longer.

The ER stay was fairly short, as neither the burns nor the smoke inhalation appeared to be life-threatening, but Dr. Cruz had arrived in the hospital wing to make her feelings known to Jimmy regarding the risk his brother posed to himself.

This time, Jimmy had had no choice but to agree.

\---------------------

In the common area of the Las Cruces Psychiatric Hospital, Jimmy searched the crowd of patients milling about during their free hour. He knew his brother wouldn't be hard to find; he was always avoiding contact with the other patients as much as possible. He spotted a familiar head of thinning grey hair poking out from atop a chair that faced a window.

"I see him over there," he told the orderly. "I think I can take it from here."

Jimmy spotted a spare chair at a nearby table, and dragged it across the room to where Chuck was seated. He sat himself down next to Chuck, who had remained motionless, staring blankly out the window.

"Hey buddy. How'ya doin'?"

Chuck blinked, and continued staring at the desert out the window.

"Ok, you're going to continue giving me the silent treatment. I get it. And you're not even gonna look at me, which seems to be an ongoing theme today. But I'm going to keep coming here every day anyway. It's the least I can do."

Jimmy stared out the window himself. He didn't see what was so fascinating out there...but then again, he knew he could leave this facility any time he wanted to. Every time he came here to visit Chuck, he found himself watching the other people who were in here for treatment, and wondering how it felt to be among them. Some were clearly delusional, some were depressed. Some were addicts, some were nervous wrecks. Some sat picking endlessly at their hair, reminding him of a parrot he had seen in a zoo once, when he was a child, that had plucked out all of its own feathers in frustration.

Some of the patients seemed perfectly normal and sane. (Some probably _were_ perfectly normal and sane.)

"Thirty days."

Jimmy was shocked out of his thoughts by the realization that Chuck had finally spoken. His voice was weak, still damaged by the smoke, but he was at least speaking.

"You had me sent here for thirty days, but legally you can't hold me here any longer than that. New Mexico Statutes Chapter 43-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know all about that. I know you're going to fight this tooth and nail. But...even if I can't keep you here, you need to go _somewhere_."

"Just let me go home."

"You burned that down, remember? And you haven't done a lot to inspire any confidence from anyone that things have changed since then."

Chuck snorted derisively.

"I imagine the doctors tell you all sorts of things."

"Yeah, they do. Like they told me if they let you out of here when your thirty days are up, you'll probably try to kill yourself again."

Chuck looked down, suddenly defensive.

"What do you mean ' _again_ '?"

"Don't play dumb with me," said Jimmy, suddenly curt. "Nobody thinks that lantern got knocked over on its own...or at least, nobody who really knows you thinks that. That lawn full of appliances may not have meant a lot to the firefighters who kept you from burning down the whole neighborhood, but Dr. Cruz and I both know what's going on."

"That doesn't mean-" began Chuck, before being cut-off

"I mean, Jesus, Chuck, self-immolation? I know you must harbor a lot of fantasies of martyrdom, but that's extreme, even for you. Nobody does that."

"You say that because you're too young to remember news coverage of the Vietnam War."

"Yeah, well, this isn't Vietnam. You're not a Buddhist monk or something. You're my brother, and I can't stand you, but I don't want to lose you, so I have to do this."

A nurse walked over to where the brothers were sitting. She stood and watched the two of them for a second, before ticking off a box on the form she carried and moving on to the next patient on her observation list.

"Every thirty minutes," said Chuck. "My time, my _life_ , reduced to a series of check-ins and group therapy sessions and terrible meals and medications."

"Any of it doing any good?" Jimmy inquired, hopeful. "Even the meds?"

"The current plan seems to be to sedate me into oblivion and then comment on my lack of energy as if it's symptomatic of something else. I don't feel better or worse; I just feel tired. Useless."

Jimmy watched his brother imperceptibly slump. Chuck had always looked prematurely aged, but he no longer seemed to be able to carry his exhaustion without being physically weighed down by it. Jimmy wished he could do something comforting.

"Hey, at least nobody's allowed to have cell phones in here. It's the little victories, right?"

He dreaded what he knew he would have to say next.

"I...I know this is going to upset you, and I figured you weren't going to do this the easy way, so I'm gonna let you know that we might have to do it the hard way. Dr. Cruz and I started the process for petitioning for an extended commitment. That's up to six months, depending on your progress. Not necessarily at this facility--we can move you if you want--but just somewhere until they can get you a bit more stabilized."

" _Stabilized_. Uh-huh."

Jimmy ran his hand through his hair, concerned at his brother's lack of reaction.

"Look, this isn't fun for me either. You don't want to be here, I don't want to do this. But you've got no other options at this point. I mean, if I agreed to let you go home, it was on condition that we send around a 24-hour nurse to babysit you, which I didn't think you would be wild about."

"You'd be correct."

"Howard, of all people, offered to pay for it. Think he feels guilty and is running around desperately looking for something to do to help."

"It'd be a waste of HHM's money to do anything for me at this point," said Chuck flatly. "It's foolish to expect I'm ever coming back to them. Or to the law in general."

"You gotta stop talking like that."

"It's true though. You know it is."

Jimmy couldn't deny this. For as much as his own reputation had been through the wringer, he still hadn't ever found himself having to defend his ability to function mentally. He could drive a car, use a phone, not be sent into a panic attack by the prospect of going into a supermarket

The sun was now beginning to set, and the other visitors in the facility were beginning to filter out, as the nursing staff made their way around the room announcing that dinner was about to be served shortly.

"Look, Chuck," began Jimmy. "I know you hate me."

"I don't _hate_ you."

"You told me you never cared about me."

Chuck got up from his chair, slowly, and with considerable effort. 

"...you of all people should've known I didn't mean that."

He shot Jimmy a glance that Jimmy could've sworn was almost apologetic. Almost. (If Chuck had been the sort to do apologies.)

"Let me rephrase that," started Jimmy, again. "I know you don't like me, don't trust me, think I'm a walking time-bomb, and find me a threat to the reputation of our family, as well as the legitimacy of the entire legal profession."

"...Mmmm, I'll accept that," said Chuck with an equivocal shrug.

"Right. So. Things between us, they're not great. They've mostly been getting worse. But, believe it or not, I don't actually want to watch you destroy yourself. When they let you out of here because they can't legally hold you here any longer, I don't want to see you going out there by yourself. I don't know that I can be the one to help you, but...I'm going to at least try."

"Charles," called the nurse. "You need to be lining up for dinner now."

 "Coming shortly," Chuck replied.

Jimmy shook his head and laughed.

"They sure like their schedules here. It really is like being back in elementary school or something, isn't it?"

"You have no idea."

"I'm sorry again," said Jimmy. "I don't know that I can make anything right, but if I can try, you can at least promise me you'll try too. Right?"

Chuck raised his eyebrows.

"I suppose so, if it'll stop me from being stuck here for any longer than I absolutely have to."

"That's the spirit!" cried Jimmy as Chuck walked off to join the nurse at the other end of the room.

He had no idea if Chuck meant what he said. Hell, he didn't even know if he meant what he said. He could at least hope and try, though.

Sometimes they were the only things you could do.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not ordinarily one for 'fix-it' fics, but there's something ineffably tragic about the tortured relationship between the McGill brothers, which is made all the more painful because either one of them could've decided to stop at any point and forgive the other one. Part of me is still mourning Chuck's absence in season 4 of Better Call Saul, so I felt like taking a stab at your very intriguing Yuletide prompt!


End file.
